At the end of our second week (first of true development), I don't have much to mention in great detail--and that seems to be a good thing. In terms of process, though, there are a few things I'd just like to point out.
First, I imagine that in the workplace/industry, there won't be engineering homework assignments to get in the way of development. Thank goodness. While it hasn't been a horrible problem, it has been kind of annoying that the occasional engineer is too stressed about getting his homework done to work on the project during our designated studio time. However, this is certainly not the case with all engineers, and even when someone on my team has done so, they've really picked it up and delivered when it came down to the line.
And as a shout-out to our current artist, Christine has done a great job taking care of the art that we've needed, even getting ahead of schedule.
In fact, things are running so smoothly this time around that I am almost to the point where I'm unsure of what to do specifically as a producer. Everyone's got what they need, I've tried to catch potential struggles or problems already, and now I'm afraid that I'll look like I'm not doing much during this coming week. If you have any suggestions on how to step it up and be a rockstar producer, please let me know!
Here's what I did this week:
- Brought candy for my team (I've found that even something as little as a bag of Starburst can be a big deal--thanks to Kurt Coppersmith for the suggestion), and worked to boost morale
- Tracked tasks and updated the burndown charts as Scrum master
- Created a sticky-note task checkout system to give physical token reminders of where effort was currently most important
- Conducted team meetings and backlog updates to ensure deliverables were punctually completed
- Researched and distributed to engineers tutorials on getting graphics and spritesheet animations to function properly in XNA
- Updated the game production blog
- Got some sound code snippets to assist in the eventual creation of our sound engine (is that the right term?)
- Assisted in the art pipeline by taking Christine's Illustrator files and creating transparent-background PNG files out of her images
Finally, I also kept in touch with our Museum contacts and set up the official installation of our Museum games. We now have a public game credit! Thanks to all our team members for their incredible efforts, to the Museum for the opportunity, and to our EPs for supporting our shot at such a project!
- Troy
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